Loss

When I got close to the intersection of Heatherwilde Blvd. and Wells Branch Parkway along the Pflugerville-Austin border on May 20, I was saddened to see that the inevitable had come to pass. The land on the northeast corner of that intersection, where I’d been photographing nature over the years since 1999, had become a construction zone. A visit to that site on May 13, 2013, produced the abstract Texas thistle photo you saw in these pages shortly afterwards. Here are four pictures of other things that were there on that day three years ago; all, and all their descendants, are gone from that place now. Requiescant in prato.

One “and so on” that I couldn’t help noticing there is the price of gasoline, as I mentioned to you. At the Costco in Libertyville I paid $2.72 a gallon, while my neighborhood Costco is selling gas today for $1.99.

Wow. That is quite a difference. Sometimes I feel like a frog in boiling water here. Costs keep squeezing us and, indeed, people are leaving Illinois in droves. It doesn’t feel that way when you are stuck in traffic here, though!

As I read nature-related blogs I notice more and more posts about the loss of wild areas, habitat, special places. I don’t know how to fight this loss (or if it’s even possible.) One way is what you are doing — posting your firsthand losses. Do you think there is a way for similar-minded bloggers to do something on a broader more interrelated scale?

Sometimes groups like the Native Prairies Association of Texas and the Nature Conservancy have managed to buy properties to keep them from being developed. As for posting about my own losses, that makes people aware of the problem, but I don’t know how much else it accomplishes.

When will we learn? Perhaps only when it’s too late. Trying to explain the value of that ground, and those plants, to those who have now disturbed it … would be futile. Such a sad state of affairs. I am sorry. For all of us.

When I was up in Lake County, Illinois, last week and the week before, I saw quite a few signs designating properties that have been preserved. They’re not contiguous, but at least those parcels will remain.

More and more often, construction and destruction walk the meadows hand in hand. To build a hospital, a home, a school, or a bike trail is one thing, but far too much of the construction I see is purely speculative: purposeless except for profit. The commercial building on spec here is out of control, and far too often the buildings stand empty after construction. The trend — and the realities — are grieved by many. You’re not alone in your response.

You raise a good point about speculative buildings. If enough of them sit idle, perhaps they’ll discourage other builders from doing the same thing, but I have the impression that most of the new buildings in Austin get occupied fairly quickly. There’s certainly a building boom now in and around Texas’s main cities, as we observed in Dallas yesterday and today. In any case, I appreciate your commiseration and that of other people.

I share your sadness, Steve. For a while we were seeing some building with preservation of nature in mind, but that seems gone with only the desire for more homes to be built everywhere possible. I see more and more “builders” popping up all the time. Carpenters decide to go off on their own to escape working for someone else and before you know it homes built on spec are happening. Some remain empty for years. Slowly we are destroying natural habitats. At least some locations are deemed unbuildable, thank goodness.

You and Linda both homed in on the practice of building on spec. I don’t know how much that happens in central Texas, but I do know that Austin and all the surrounding towns continue growing at among the highest rates in the country. Given that rapid growth, I doubt that buildings sit unoccupied for very long. That’s not good news for parcels of land here.

Amherst is a fairly desirable town, so most are sold before completion. But there are always some that are not. A while back the town placed a moratorium on approving new building lots which made a lot of realtors and builders unhappy although there were already quite a few approved that went undeveloped. That has gone by the board. There doesn’t even seem to be much concern for affordable homes any longer either which is unfortunate.

In Austin the question of affordability is multi-fold. The price of homes keeps rising, which is an impediment in its own right, but also because taxes on homes keep going up accordingly. Entities here that insist on taxing us on the value of our homes are: the school district, the city, the county, the community college, and the county health district. When’s the last time you heard of a governmental entity reducing its budget?

They never do…because-if they don’t spend their entire budget the next fiscal year will see a reduced amount. The idea for them is to be allotted a greater amount so they must use their entire budget for that to happen.

By the way, I did the calculations a couple of months ago and found out that each American’s share of the national debt is approximately $60,000. I’m sure you and Mary Beth will have no trouble ponying up your $120,000.

It is scary that the government runs up such deficits. And it has come down in recent years. It would be nice to get back to the surplus we once had and then the government could pay back what it “borrowed” from the Social Security trust fund. Don’t get me started on the issue of SS and entitlements.

While it’s true that the annual deficit has been coming down, there is still a hefty deficit. Because of that (and interest), the debt continues to grow fairly rapidly. I’d better stop before we both launch into tirades.